Xara Photo & Graphic Designer: how to view photo attributes?

Please forgive me if this is in FAQs or elsewhere on this forum. I am a newbie to Xara but I have searched in various ways and not found an answer.

Typically I will be editing a photo or some other bitmap. First I'll apply various enhancements to the photo/bitmap - levels, colour balance and so on. Then I'll overlay it with graphic objects - like lines, shapes, arrows and text.

I can easily find and organise all the graphic objects in the Layer Gallery, no problem.

But the adjustments I'll have made to the base photo/bitmap are, as the manual says, 'stored on the photo as attributes'. Now, for example, if I choose the base image in the gallery then the 'Enhance Photos' Infobar shows up and I can 'Compare' the enhanced image with the original. Also, if I, say, select the Brightness Levels Dialog tool then I can see what changes I have made to the settings. But I cannot see easily just which tools I have used on this image. I seem to have to look at the settings of each possible enhancement to see whether I used it or not.

I'd have expected to see, in the gallery, above the base image, a stack of the changes that I had made, rather like the layers in other programs. For instance: Shadows|Saturation|Levels.

Am I missing something? Expecting too much?

With thanks in anticipation

Bob

PS. After wrestling for a week with Affinity Photo and failing to find how to do what I wanted with custom brushes, I stumbled across Xara and was up and running in 20 minutes. It is a delight to use. And a proper manual too!

Welcome to TalkGraphics Bob

I think you have pretty much answered your own question. When you are using the Photo Tool > Enhance Photos mode then the most common settings for the selected photo will appear on the Infobar (the settings at the top of the screen). Other settings are retained in the other tools, for example the Photo Hue Tool.

But I am not aware of a single source that shows all the different settings. And I agree this would be very helpful.

ironically - does not affinity pholo give you this info up to a point at least in it's history tab ? - xara does not do this...

are you finding the xara art brushes better than the affinity brushes?

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Originally Posted by gwpriester

Welcome to TalkGraphics Bob

I think you have pretty much answered your own question. When you are using the Photo Tool > Enhance Photos mode then the most common settings for the selected photo will appear on the Infobar (the settings at the top of the screen). Other settings are retained in the other tools, for example the Photo Hue Tool.

But I am not aware of a single source that shows all the different settings. And I agree this would be very helpful.

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Thanks for this. I'm not expecting to see the particular settings changes that I've made. Just, as in my example, that I'd used the Shadows, Saturation and Levels tools. So then I can decide whether I want to reconsider them.

B

Quote:

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Originally Posted by handrawn

ironically - does not affinity pholo give you this info up to a point at least in it's history tab ? - xara does not do this...

are you finding the xara art brushes better than the affinity brushes?

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Hi handrawn. I never got far enough with Affinity Photo to find that but from what I recall of PhotoPlus I'm sure you are right. I struggled too much with the custom brushes to get to that stage.

It isn't so much that the brushes per se are better but that brushes management is so much easier. For example, I might want to overlay a map - or an aerial photo - with a walking route. For that I'd like a string of little arrows - like a dashed line but with weeny arrows for the dashes. (Man Friday footprints are another option.) In P&GD I created a suitable vector arrow in a minute or so (with no prior knowledge of this app) and, after a slight hiccup while I found out how to change spacing and suchlike - and then colour - I had my walking route of little yellow arrows on an aerial photo. The fact that they are vector brushes is also a huge advantage. I don't know if Affinity now support vector brushes but certainly their lack was a problem for me with PhotoPlus.

B

affinity photo is raster [bitmap], affinity designer is vector - you really need both... they will both open each others files [may need some getting used to]

That's too much for my occasional requirements. Xara P&GD is just fine for me.